Walterinnesia aegyptia LATASTE, 1887 (OPHIDIA: ELAPIDAE) AND THE STATUS OF Naja morgani MOCQUARD 1905 Göran Nilson 1 and Nasrullah Rastegar-Pouyani 2 Submitted December 28, 2005. We separate the eastern populations of Walterinnesia in Iran, Iraq and eastern Saudi Arabia under the name Walterinnesia morgani. This taxon is easily separated from Walterinnesia aegyptia in Egypt, Israel, western Saudi Arabia, and Jordan by a significantly lower number of anterior dorsal scale rows. Walterinnesia morgani is also having on average a lower number of ventrals, subcaudals, and united subcaudals, as well as a completely different juvenile color pattern, consisting of 25 to 33 reddish crossbars on an otherwise black body. In Walterinnesia aegyptia the juvenile dorsal color is black without any pattern. Keywords: Reptilia, Serpentes Elapidae, Bungarinae, Walterinnesia aegyptia, Walterinnesia morgani, taxon- omy, Iran. INTRODUCTION Taxonomic considerations of the different popula- tions of elapids, originally described as Walterinnesia aegyptia (Lataste, 1881) from Egypt, or as Naja morgani (Mocquard, 1905), or Atractaspis wilsoni (Wall, 1908) from Iran have appeared in the literature over times. Al- though elapid taxonomy and systematics in general are comparatively well settled, relatively little has been ar- chived about this comparatively rare nocturnal desert- dweller. Occasionally, speculations have focused on varia- tion in juvenile color patterns in eastern specimens and whether a taxonomic separation (subspecies or species) could be justified. Already Haas and Werner (1969) stressed this question. However, problems to get access to enough specimens from the seemingly wide range of this taxon have made this task difficult. The recent discovery of the species in southern Turkish Anatolia (Uðurtaþ et al., 2001) further points to the fact that very little is known of the total distribution and geographical range as well as morphological varia- tion of this nocturnal and to a high extent subterranean elapid. Recently we collected a few remarkable speci- mens of Walterinnesia far outside the known distribu- tion of the species in Iran, which gave us an opportunity to focus on the taxonomy of the species in Iran and west Asia. One big female was found on the southern slopes of the Elburz Mountains in Iran, about 2 km NW of the Karaj Dam and very close to the Karaj river on a steep gravel slope in a non-forested area with scarce vegeta- tion. A juvenile specimen was collected outside Ker- manshah City in the northern section of the Zagros Mountains. Both these records are far outside the known distribution of the species, and the Elburz record is amazing as it is at high altitude (2000 m) and on a moun- tain range that borders the southern shores of the Cas- pian Sea. MATERIAL AND METHODS 29 specimens are included in this study (Table 1). Due to very variable condition of several of the speci- mens, all characters could not always be investigated. Sex determination could sometimes be difficult. In the cases of information taken from literature, character states such as number of subcaudals could sometimes in- dicate the sex. Statistical significant levels tested with the two-tailed Mann–Whitney U-test. Museum acronyms for specimens examined of re- ferred to from literature: GNM, Göteborg Natural His- tory Museum, Göteborg, Sweden; BMNH, British Mu- seum of Natural History, London, UK; CNHM, Chicago 1026-2296/2007/1401-0007 © 2007 Folium Publishing Company Russian Journal of Herpetology Vol. 14, No. 1, 2007, pp. 7 – 14 1 Göteborg Natural History Museum, Box 7283, S-402 35 Göteborg, Sweden. 2 Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Razi University, 67149 Kermanshah, Iran.